Byline Imbalance

~ Laura

Allison sent me the following e-mail that is making the rounds:

Women writers, this is the time to query HARPER’S, THE NEW YORKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, VANITY FAIR and THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Since the beginning of September, there have been 324 male bylines and only 99 female ones in these notable general interest magazines, according to Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a deputy editor at GLAMOUR. You can check out the details on her personal website.

According to New York Times, the editors of The New Yorker (98 men to 27 women), Harper’s (28 to 6) and The New York Times Magazine (103 to 36) declined to comment when invited by the newspaper. Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly (61 male bylines to 18 female),
responded in an e-mail message: “The byline imbalance is endemic in public affairs magazines.” Did he mean this as a defense?

Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair (34 to 12), said in another e-mail: “We don’t assign stories based on gender, but now that Ruth Davis Konigsberg has helpfully shown us the error of our ways, henceforth all assignments will be equally balanced between the sexes.”

Graydon, we will be watching.

Published by Laura

3 thoughts on “Byline Imbalance”

  1. Wow. This site captures part of a ritual in our household that you might appreciate. When the new New Yorker arrives, my wife always opens to the table of contents and tallies the number of males versus females. It is rarely a good week.
    Her other endearing routine along these lines: open the Sunday NYT wedding announcements over brunch and count the number of women who kept their own last name. Some weeks are pretty good; many are not. We’re still trying to figure out whether time of year helps predict. Undergraduate institution doesn’t seem to.

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  2. Do you really want to read an article chosen not because it was the best written, but instead because it was the best written by a woman? Maybe editors would do well with blind auditions, like symphonies, and see which ones get to the front.

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  3. Dave S: Do your really think that the gross imbalance in female to male writers in all major magazines in purely merit based?! All of those men just happen to be better writers; and there simply aren’t anywhere near as many good female writers?
    One can’t see if the commenter has a straight face in this forum, but frankly, your comment does not pass the laugh test.

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